Can someone buy license or assets for me?

I asked that already on Q&A days ago without the topic being already approved by a moderator, so I ask here again.

What I'm currently thinking is to provide programming service to someone in exchange for Unity License months / assets from the assets store. Does unity allows that? Is that legal?

The main reason is that I live in italy, so taxes are a complex subject, payments across countries are even harder subject and the tax specialist just want 200 bucks just to let me know how to proceed, instead I want to avoid that, and at least for few months accept payments in goods form.

Does unity allow gift licenses or assets to someone from any kind of form? (or do I have to give temporarily my password to someoneelse so he can proceed to payment?).

I'm preparing to become really freelance starting from september ( Actually I'm working on collaboration with a game company, but soon they will be out of work for me, they are a small indie team and already provided me 7 months of paid work which is good, so I need to start seeking other freelance tasks because they are lacking customers).

 

http://money.stackexchange.com/ques...ent-in-goods-count-as-income-for-tax-purposes

 

Someone who owns Pro licenses can give you a license key to use while you work on their project. Whether that's taxable is still a question better left to an accountant, but here in the US, as long as you're actually working for them, I'd say it is not -- providing someone tools to perform a task for which you're hiring them is not the same as simply giving something to someone outright.

Not sure how it would work with the Asset Store, though.

 

Better to wait autoritative answer then, thanks for your thoughts. I think would be really usefull a "gift" option both for license and asset store (like amazon gits) to enable that kind of payments, that would be also positive for Unity 3D incomes.

 

Is there any reason you cannot simply pass your account information (username and password) to the third party, have them buy the license, and then have you change your password? I don't know whatsoever if Unity would allow it but that's usually the first thing that comes to mind in these situations.

 

You can have someone buy a license in the store; not download the asset. Take the invoice number and give it away so you then can redeem the product. Never give/share passwords.
And only do this with someone you can trust.

I'm pretty sure your invoice code will work in the same nature as vouchers. If not contact the developer and redeem that way.

 

How can someone get the invoice code? (assume he never used asset store)

 

The invoice code is emailed to the buyer after they purchase something from the asset store.

There is no way to purchase there without going to the store and creating an account.

Edit: Actually, if I remember correctly, I think you have to create the account on unity3d.com first, then use that same account to log into the Asset Store to make a purchase.

 

You do realise that asset store gifts for work done will count as fringe benefits and make your tax situation more complex.

Just take the cash and use it to pay an accountant to do your return at the end of the year. If you aren't making enough money to do that, I would question why you bother getting paid at all.

 

unless the work require unity, in that case the pro license can be considered a tool right?, unluckily there's no "GIFT" feature in the unity web forms so at best I have to give my password to perfect strangers, there are not payment services based on throw away codes that I can use (in example the stranger create a throw away code with the value for X unity month license, and gives me the code, like the credit card number but usable only once).

@BoredMormon, in italy that's not that simple, you have a tax treshold (if you are under 30.000 € yearly) and you respond to certain requisites that ends up by eating 40% of your money, however if you do something not expected by laws or instantly miss a requisite you enter another treshold wich has taxation that at the ned eats almost 70% of your money (and you cannot get back to 40%). + Accountant fee

Also I'm just starting, as can you expect I did not saved much money from my first salaries and accountants are really expensive (starting 50//60€ month if you are lucky 100€ more realistic.) Also you have no defence against accountants, so basically the could exploit tax reductions without telling that to you and they can keep that money and you cannot use any law to protect you (law suits to italian accountants usually fail).. If you start asking exotic stuff like bills to foreign employers you just get charged for the consulting too much plus of course a fee on each bill.

I hope one day that becomes fully automatic and accountants just get deprecated.

 

I'm reading some paranoia here. Are you sure you aren't exaggerating all of this?

 

When you have a prime minister who claims that the evasion of high taxes is a God-given right, you sure aren't stimulating the general populace to pay their taxes happily.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...-bad-in-italy/2011/11/25/gIQA4NJ3vN_blog.html

http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/brief/roots-and-remedies-rampant-tax-evasion-italy

 

I'm from Greece. That doesn't sound all that crazy to me.

 

Really, wow. I new the NZ tax system was pretty great. The Australian system is decent too, though not as nice as NZ. But I didn't realize other systems were so bad.

 

Yeah, actually in italy you have to pay for errors of your accoutant, that's crazy. And it is not paranoia, just telling what I read from blogs and hear from freelance friends. Hope I could live in NZ ^^. Just to give you an idea of what is living in italy, A friend who owns a bar/restaurant and is not getting enough money to pay food resellers etc is just making something around 40€ / day of income. his accountant is asking 150€/week basically for doing no work (have to write just the daily income for each day and detract from taxes a dozen bills each months, wich could be as well as 1/2 hours of works).

I think unity is going to lose some market in italy, but not because of unity fault, but because of italian laws fault, a "gift" sisytem integrated into unity payment process would be a fresh air and maybe usefull also for other countries who know

 

It sounds to me like you are asking if it is ok to engage in tax evasion, because the taxes would be too high, and would be too complicated to figure out. Am I understanding correctly?

 

Based on eveything you've said it sounds like for your situation you have chosen the wrong profession.

 

That's crazy. Here a tax agent to do personal taxes costs a few hundered dollars. And you only do it once a year. You don't have to use an accountant, but it's normally worth it because they know the system well enough to reduce your tax bill.

For a small business you might spend a couple of grand annually. And it's the same deal, accountants cost less then the tax advantage they can get you. So it's essentially a no cost game.

As you get bigger you might need an accountant throughout the year. But it's always the same deal. A good accountant who knows the system will net you more money then they cost.

 

Did you resolve the problem?

 

any profession would be wrong in italy ..

So licenses are no longer individual? and how can collaborating indies deal with that?

 

Hate your country that much? You are in the EU. Just pick up and go to another one.

It sounds like the accountants are doing pretty well, accounting is not hard.

 

It is if no one knows what they're supposed to do and the rules keep changing.

 

Actually you are forced by law to use accountants and instead of saving you moneys they are just another expense, certain accounants just keep the "saved money" and as plus keep asking for a fee.. I can understand how that can seem strange, but italy is like that. Each profession has a "expected revenue" (sector studies) if you dont have that revenue the country think you are doing tax evasion and ask extra money.

I konw you can't believe that, that that's all true. and things are getting worse taxes are increasing yearly in the last few years. I don't understand why people still acclaim current/old leaders instead of rebelling.

 

Which is why I was suggesting dropping game dev and becoming an accountant instead. If you can't bet em, join em.

 

Is there any guarantee that a rebellion would lead to better results?

 

This is often the case after a rebellion. There have been a few succesful rebellions/revolutions/civil wars throughout history. But most of them just result in a new set of tyrants or incompetent leaders.

 

George Washington was pretty cool i guess?

 

Just look where it's leading us to though.

 

You really do have to just pick the lesser of 2 evils now, don't you.


As for the OP, in most countries gifts in return for a service are still counted as an income. Also, if an organisation gives you a license while you work for them then anything you create using that license will belong to them, not you. What is in the pro license that you need that isn't in the free unity version? As for unity assets, they would highly likely count as an expense against any income you do make, but if someone gave you assets in lieu of payment then the asset value would likely count as income & the value would be taxable.